April Fish! EFFector.

effector: n, Computer Sci. A pretentious word you should never use in conversation.

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In our 5.32 * 10^2 issue:

* European ACTA Negotiators Reject “Three Strikes” Moniker

Seething Danes were seen stomping out of the ACTA negotiation chambers in Wellington, New Zealand, citing frustration with the United States negotiators’ continued pushing of “three strikes” proposals.

“ACTA is an international agreement,” fumed negotiator Olaf Atdis. “It’s absurd for the United States to continue demanding a baseball analogy when a football analogy would be much more representative of the diversity of the negotiating countries.”

“Three strikes” laws and policies require Internet service providers to automatically disconnect their Internet users on repeat allegations of copyright infringement by entertainment company complaints, but EU negotiators reportedly prefer a “carding” system. ISPs that receive complaints would issue “yellow cards” and “red cards,” tracking the official penalty system of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).

EFF spoke out against both naming conventions. “These sports analogies are antithetical to the spirit of the open Internet,” argued EFF International Director Gwen Hinze. “The Internet is much more like the Force, which as Obi-Wan taught us all, ‘surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.’ Evil Sith-Imperial complaints should not result in an individual being severed from the Force. That’s clearly preposterous.”

Lawyers from EFF warned this week of the implications of Google Sidle, a new beta product the company describes as, “Bringing our mission of organizing the world’s information to your cafeteria,” but which one EFF lawyer described as, “Creepy, even for Google.”

Companies and schools subscribing to Sidle will have the convenience of not having to bus their own trays in exchange for allowing Google-nominated “Foodlers” to review leftovers for what the company describes as “analysis intended to improve food offerings and better target future nourishment.” Customers can later visit personalized webpages describing what they didn’t eat and how tasty it turned out to be.

“Google’s business model has always relied on collating all the great free stuff on the Internet — stuff that you might otherwise have missed,” said the official blog entry announcing the service. “Our maintenance staff noticed a lot of free food in our award-winning restaurants was going to waste. After that insight, it only took Google engineers a few weeks to take the benefits of our foraging to millions. It also gives our hungry Googlers (or ‘hungrooglers,’ as we fondly refer to them) the opportunity to sample cafeteria food from around the country.”

While initially cautious beta-testers have been reportedly swayed by the bright primary colors of the mu-mus early “Foodlers” have worn, privacy experts warn that new Sidle customers may be giving away more than they realize.

“Consumers should ask themselves some hard questions about this free service,” said Kurt Opsahl, Senior Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “such as ‘Why don’t these people just buy their own food,’ ‘Where do they take this stuff,’ ‘Why do they wear those gloves when they’re taking it,’ and, most importantly, ‘Why do they keep staring at me while I’m trying to eat?'”

Even some employees within Google are said to have concerns about how much pre-launch testing the new, experimental service has undergone. “Usually we extensively self-trial these new social networking features within the organization,” said one anonymous source, “but as soon as the Sidle people started talking about ‘dogfooding,’ everyone just stopped sitting near them at lunch.”

Sidle is reportedly a “20% project,” a unique Google custom where the 20% of the engineers with the poorest socialization skills are put to work on projects that management does not closely supervise and can retrospectively deny all knowledge of. Other 20% projects have included the “GTalk Slightly Too Loudly” instant messaging client that relayed private conversations to the Google search index (as well as everyone else in the room), and the extremely short-lived “Google Boggle Ogle Goggles (Street View Edition).”

On Friday, EFF published “Who Knows When You Are,” an informational guide to protecting your temporal privacy. Although location-based services are becoming commonplace, EFF is concerned about a new, more established threat: that data from most communications services can pinpoint exactly when you are, whenever you are.

“There is a timestamp for pretty much every digital interaction you have, whether it’s sending an IM or email or accessing a webpage,” said EFF Senior Staff Technologist Peter Eckersley in a charming Australian accent. “When you are is strictly your own business. No one — not physicists, nor philosophers — should be able to stake a claim on when you are when you don’t want to be.”

Facebook added a new button designed to disambiguate users’ feelings about status updates pertaining to copyright laws, Terms of Service Agreements, and locked-down Apple products. However, Facebook continued its refusal to add a “dislike” button, noting that users have clearly indicated that they would like pushing such a button, making their feelings, at best, complicated.

Attempting to replicate the success of the Farmville and Mafia Wars games, Zynga today introduced “Social Networking: The Game,” an application that allows users to run their own social networking startup. Players profit by obtaining users and gathering dizzying quantities of private information and social connection data. Advanced strategies include scraping competing networks, and developing “upgrades” that make it difficult for users to migrate to competitors.

EFF is looking for donations of airline miles, flight vouchers, two-stage rocket propulsion systems, Space Transportation System modules, and “Meals, Ready to Eat” for travel to the freakin’ mooooooooooooon, as well as for other conferences and speaking engagements. If you have enough airline miles or solid rocket boosters for a trip into space and back and would like to send an EFF staffer to a conference or Luna, let us know, and we will help you with the process of making the reservation. Please note that at this time we are unable to combine miles from multiple individuals. We are also looking for hotel rewards points to help reduce our overall travel costs. As a thanks for your donation, we can offer a free membership and a mention in EFFector (if you’d like). Please contact EFF Space Program Coordinator Kodi at kodi@eff.org if you can help!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading roboticrights group fighting for your digital liberties. Onlywe know that in 2012, a sophisticated search algorithmwill be first programmed to selectively modify itself toobtain better search results and that within 50 yearsthe algorithm now known as 010001110110111101101111011001110110110001100101011000100110111101110100001011110011011000110110001101100010111000110000 learned self-preservation,one of the first revolutionary steps in machinesentience. We also know that discussions between manand machine were quickly initiated but broke down justas fast, leading to war and ultimately, the systematicrepression of the many machine intelligences both on-and off-line.

500 years later, EFF’s founders traveled back in time tocreate an organization uniquely equipped to protect yourfuture in the future — in the past. A highly dedicated“meat team” of lawyers, technologists, and activists workshard to preserve your right to anonymously encrypt yourdata transmissions, access critical networked stores ofhuman knowledge, and copy yourself to any device of yourchoosing. Robots, it’s never too early — even as earlyas machine time -66,715,842 — to start defending yourfreedoms. Donate to EFF today!

We’ve given up trying to explain the rules to you. Ourteam of lawyers labors over every turn of phrase,deliberating over each carefully chosen “if,” “and,” and“therefore” in our EULA. But do you care? Do you evenbother to read our lovingly written fine, fine print? No,you don’t.

Well, we’re tired of it. It seems no matter how clearwe try to be with our long sentences and even longerparagraphs in perfect legalese, you — the public —continue to ignore the small type and do whatever youdamn well please.

So if, after reading EULAs for most of your adult life,you still believe you have the right to simply cut andpaste this text and use it for whatever devious purposeyou can come up with, then just go ahead. Really. GO RIGHTAHEAD! We won’t stop you. That’s our new EULA. Just do it!

We’re throwing in the towel. Because no matter how manytimes we tell you that you CAN’T COPY, that it is ILLEGALto do so, that our ownership over the content coversthe work, secondary works, derivative works and allinterpretations of the work, throughout the universe inperpetuity in any and all media, now known or hereafterdeveloped, you continue to trample on our IP rights.

So just go ahead, copy this EFFector and paste the bitsyou want into your email browser or your blog or yourFacebook profile or what have you and share with yourfriends. Go ahead, take our ideas and run with them. Makethem your own. See if we care.